This application presents a Process for the complete treatment of sugar cane filter cake mud that separates and extracts its components into usable products. It allows for the efficient elimination of a voluminous amount of waste material of the sugar industry and can be undertaken with relatively low energy consumption and reduced capital and operating investments as compared to existing technologies that employ organic solvents to produce only a crude wax.
For many years, efforts have been made to find practical uses for the byproducts of processed sugar cane. Chief among these is sugar cane filter cake mud. The mud is an abundant material, representing between 3–4% of the total crushed sugar cane. It is also an attractive material for exploitation as it possesses an wide and diverse range of materials and elements (more than 50 have been identified). However this complexity also complicates effective treatment of the mud. Indeed untreated mud ferments within days, and the decay of its components commences at that time.
The sugar industry currently treats the vast bulk of this mud as a waste product thereby incurring handling costs that vary according to the prevailing government environmental regulations. Typically, a portion of the mud is used as a fertilizer within a few miles of the facility that generated the mud. Such use is limited by the costs of transporting the mud and the capacity of soils to accept it. The balance of the mud is usually contained in some sort of closed system such as an oxidation lagoon where it is mixed with water, allowed to decompose and then transported for disposal. These closed systems divert lands from other uses and incur significant maintenance costs.
Policosanol, which is a second generation mud derivate, is one of the useful by-products of sugar cane processing, and is, itself, a valuable substance having a number of beneficial uses. The principal impediment to the widespread use of policosanol, however, is the extremely high cost of producing it. However, by using this refined wax, it is possible to considerably reduce the cost of producing policosanol. Accordingly, policosanol and phytosterols can be a normal production of the process of this invention, which increases the importance of the overall sugar cane industry.